


believing in

by ten_and_a_rose



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: A really really tough prompt!, Angst, F/M, Gift Fic, Post-Episode: s02e13 Doomsday, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-06-12
Packaged: 2018-07-14 16:19:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7179836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ten_and_a_rose/pseuds/ten_and_a_rose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Believing in Rose and the power of words...</p>
            </blockquote>





	believing in

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goingtothetardis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goingtothetardis/gifts).



> This is a gift for [mountaingirlheidi](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mountaingirlheidi/pseuds/mountaingirlheidi) ([goingtothetardis](http://goingtothetardis.tumblr.com) on tumblr) and fulfillment of her prompt, which was the following quote:  
> "But her eyes, her eyes, her eyes. They could have swallowed galaxies whole. What hope did I ever have?"  
> And one of the MOST IMPORTANT THINGS - **THANK YOU** to [Caedmon](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Caedmon/pseuds/Caedmon) for her lovely beta reading!! (good grief!)  
>  As usual, mistakes are all my own...

The Doctor collapsed into the high back chair and hunched over, elbows on his knees and face buried in his hands.  He was in the library and fully aware he was hiding - hiding from Martha; hiding from everything.

Today had been such – oh, was there even a word for it?  So much suffering; so much death.

A fixed point in time.   Another bloody fixed point he could do nothing to alter.

This was one of a few places in the Tardis that belonged only to him, a place he could go when the weight became too much to endure.  Sequestered in his own alcove here, he was safe and knew that outside there were rows of massive shelves extending back and forth seemingly infinitely.  The Tardis enjoyed rearranging the stacks anyhow, and when he was here she always ensured that no one could find him – if he did not want to be found.

Finally, he lifted his head and let his vision roam over the small study.  A few special bookcases held his most treasured titles and a few trinkets, and his desk held the rest; the truly private things.

He turned back to the huge antique roll top, with its little shelves and tiny drawers, nooks and crannies stuffed full.  There were books and papers piled and scattered haphazardly.  He’d not been here in weeks, maybe three months or more, not since – since Canary Wharf.  Unexpectedly, the desk was bursting with memories and he felt a too-familiar burning behind his eyes.

Like a sucker punch, _her_ face beamed up at him from a photograph sitting atop a pile he’d meant to sort later.  He recognized it as one he’d taken at the 2012 Olympics where they’d wandered, playing at tourism while the approaching storm simmered in the back of his awareness.

He stared at the image for as long as he dared, until he felt the tears brim and threaten to fall.  Then abruptly he turned it over and shoved it face down into the nearest cubby.

Automatically he reached for the book, the reason he’d come.  He’d not thought of it since – before – but now he was at a point low enough that he needed the catharsis of an inkpen.

The heavy hardback journal shifted under his fingers, its plain, deep blue cover a familiar weight in his hands.  He thumbed the pages randomly and set it down, and it fell open to the place where the spine was most bent from frequent use.

Amidst the circles and lines of his native tongue, four English letters had been delicately, painstakingly crafted at the top with the beauty of a master calligrapher.  More tears threatened when he saw them.

ROSE

Beneath that, circular Gallifreyan filled the page from edge to edge in different colours and sizes - here he’d used a ballpoint pen, there what looked like a sharpie, and tiny circles in red pencil filled a small spot in the right margin.

Another time he might’ve chuckled at the first entry.

_Almost made a right fool of myself today._

There was a spot after the sentence, a place his pen had lingered far too long and the ink had seeped into the fibre.  He remembered writing that, struggling so mightily with himself to get the next sentences to manifest.

_But she did.  Look beautiful._

There was another long inky pause, then another new sentence.  A first admittance that she was more than just another companion to him.

_She is beautiful.  What do I do about that?_

There was of course no date, no context, but his eidetic memory didn’t need it – it was 1869, Charles Dickens, and that dress.  That _dress_.  He’d stared up at her in awe from beneath the console and the next thing he knew he was blurting out, “Blimey!  You look _beautiful!”_

He scanned the rest of the page, then the next and the next, noting how short, laconic observations gradually gave way to slightly longer musings, then switched suddenly to the long passages and excessive verbiage of his current regeneration.  And he damned his memory that he could hear her voice in his mind laughing, laughing and breathing out, “Blimey, and I thought you _talked_ a lot!”

It was still almost enough to make his lips twitch upward for an instant at the corners before reality crashed in around him again.

He turned the page and carefully smoothed the fresh paper before taking up a pen.  Several long moments passed before the first sentence came out.  It surprised him that he wrote it.

~~

I believe in demons.

I never thought I would hold such an absurd thing up to the light, examine it for even a nanosecond, much less put it into writing.  Even if it’s only here, my stupid scrawl in a dead language.

Dead.  Gallifrey is dead.  I even told Martha about it.  All dead.  Its language and its people and I admit it all because I am the Killer of My Own Kind.  The Beast was right about that.

Sometimes I think I’ve become more like the rest of the Time Lords than I ever was before.  Dying.  Dead.  I think that’s a metaphor but some days I’m not sure.

I killed today.

I killed a twelve year old human girl with blonde hair and brown eyes and an upturned nose and an overbite and she reminded me so much of

I killed her I killed her I killed her don’t you UNDERSTAND?

My hearts ache.  I can feel it; they actually physically ache inside my chest.

ROSE.

There, I’ve written your name.

She was a terrible threat and I could not fix her.  The little girl, I mean.  She was standing there with a rifle aimed at Martha’s head, standing there burning alive with a fever I could not cure and those brown eyes dripping blood.

And I believe in demons because that virus ripping her apart inside has to be an evil thing.  I can’t believe anymore that something so cruel could simply exist, a little human girl transformed into a virulent, violent bomb, screaming from the agony in her head and crying bright red tears and tightening her finger on the trigger.

Today my sonic was a weapon.  And I used it.

I used it and got Martha out of that hell before she got infected also.

We ran.

Rose, why aren’t you here?  You would tell me I did the right thing.  You would ask and I would tell you that yes, the entire planet was going to die and it was a fixed point in time and I couldn’t change it.

You would remind me that I don’t believe in demons, not really.  You’d remind me I said I don’t believe in anything.

But you don’t know the truth.  I believe in you.  That’s what I told the Beast.  I’m so sorry I never told you.  You deserved better.  You deserved more – Rose, you deserved everything.

I think if you were here you could bring me back from this precipice, back from so close to the dead, back to myself, back to the better man you made me.

I believe in you.  You healed the unhealable, the unworthy and the damned – you healed me.  You even healed a Dalek once, remember?  You brought it back to life with just a touch and then you took away its suffering after letting it see the sun.

That seems like lifetimes ago.  Centuries.

It was that Dalek that first put the word love to what I felt – what I feel, will always feel for you.  It’s an inadequate word, Rose, but it’s a start.  I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you in time…

I was and am and always will be in love with you.  Only you.  I don’t think you know what that means.  I don’t think you understand what an impossibly brilliant thing that makes you to me.

I could say you’d have found another way.  You could have healed the girl.

I’m talking of demons.  I could say you are an angel.  I want to.

But that would distort you, romanticise your memory.  It would cheapen you, and I would never.

You could not have healed the girl, not really, and I know it.

But it’s not what I want to believe.

~~

He closed the book.  Slowly, so slowly, his forehead came to rest on it and he allowed himself to weep, openly and fully, for the first time since he’d lost Rose to Pete’s World.

 

~oOo~

 

Hours later he sat up with a start, realising he’d fallen asleep.  His neck ached and his head felt stuffy, and it took him a moment to get his bearings before he remembered where he was.  How long since he’d slept?  Had he slept at all since Canary Wharf?

With a deep, steadying breath, he gently pulled the picture of Rose out from where he’d hidden it.  He’d dreamt a vague dream and he remembered only that she’d been watching, gazing at him, her expression warm and tender and sad.

He stared for a long moment before nodding abruptly and picking up the pen again.  He smoothed out another new page and began to write with single-minded purpose.

~~

Alright, yes, this is in English.  I mean, I know it’s obvious if you’re reading it, but you aren’t.  I’m saying it anyway.  I can put these words to paper since no one will ever know they came from me.  They’re for you, Rose, so it’s only fair, even though you’ll never read them.  It’s only a fraction of what you deserve, some rubbish half-poetry, but I don’t know what else to do, and it’s past time to admit it.  Words have power.  It’s past time to give this universe words in your honour.  It’s not enough for me to remember alone.

 

She is a comet with a tail of white blonde hair  
Though she’d be just as bright were it even raven  
Then raven black would blaze as day  
And something else would be night.

When she smiles she leaves me sunblind,  
Sunblind and fumbling and lost  
Until she takes my hand and leads me home.

A Bard I once met thought it false compare  
To say his mistress’ eyes were like the sun.  
But ah, what rubbish is that.  She is the sun.  
It burned in her soul as with her fingers  
She rewrote the universe.  For me,  
She said; she said it was for me.

I kissed her then because I am an  
Old fool.  Such coward’s folly  
To steal a kiss from the Wolf  
Instead of beseech the woman.

I kissed her and I died for it.  I stole  
From the Wolf that stalks Time and Space so that  
She lives, she lives, she lives and did not burn.

 _But her eyes, her eyes, her eyes._  
The colour of amber and of whiskey  
If only I could drink enough to forget.

 _But her eyes, her eyes, her eyes._  
They hold silence and stillness and the multiverse  
And the impossible confession that she loves me.  
She loves me.  
I never meant to condemn her to that.  
What hell above all else to love me?  
But as for me – oh, her eyes.

 _Her eyes, her eyes, her eyes._  
They could have swallowed galaxies whole.  
What hope did I ever have?

~~

He shut the book, tucked it under one arm, and walked briskly to the console room.  Martha would be asleep now, and he had a favour to call in.

A day later, a thick, yellowed paperback appeared on the console.  He picked it up and saw it was an anthology from the library titled _Poetry of the Twentieth Century: Wallace Stevens_.  A tiny smile found its way to his lips as he located the page he knew would be there now, the book changed to include his work.  He found it, so creatively named “Untitled.”  He shook his head at the absurdity of it all, the idea that anyone would believe it.  Scholars would probably be debating the authenticity of this forged creation for centuries, rubbish writing as it was.  It barely even fit Stevens’ style.

The more he thought of that, such a debate, the warmer he felt.  The _idea_ of Rose was here, in the universe where she belonged, regardless of where she was herself.  People would wonder why Stevens had written it, if he had.  And if not, who then had written it, and why?

And above all they would wonder - who was _she_?

They would debate, they would discuss, they would read - and Rose would be there, alive, her being infused into the ink and the pages and the spaces between words.

 


End file.
